We are renowned bad starters. Added to that the injuries, losing field early on, plus I thought Leigh were fantastic, a lot better than I expected. Liam hood and Adam sidlow tore us apart in the first half. Good to get the win. We will be better.

2 Pts, good run out for Smith. Move on, nothing much to see here.

Lucky to get out of that one with a win, a lot of factors going against us -

Missing our 3 best backs Hastings, French, Gildart

Missing both Wingers.

Field early injury - leading to 2 second rowers in the centres. A centre on the wing and a young rookie full back on the other wing.

Covid impacted preseason missed 2.5 weeks are training.

Playing Leigh at the worst possible time I.e there small squad is relatively fit, players chomping at the bit to make an impression in super league and to beat their big rivals.


After being 18-0 and winning against any team takes some doing.

I’m not happy at all with the packs performance but feel they will improve as the season develops. Their fitness showed tonight.

Partington - 22 years old
Smithies - 20
Havard - 20
Bryne - 21
Shorrocks - 21

It’s a long season and we can sleep walk into top 6 in reality. The more game time and experience these guys get the better.


As for Harry Smith (again just 21) he coped a lot of stick first half from people on twitter etc but iced the game for us with his kicking game at the end. At least he was trying stuff. Our new captain was totally anonymous the whole game imo.

Hanley I thought was steady for an 18 year old in his second start. Again he’ll improve.

We’re not a Warrington who drop young players after a shaky performance and bring in quick fix Australians, remember that year they bought Bodene Thompson and Mitch Brown!

Stick with them, support them, they’ll come good.

Not read all the thread...has anyone brought Bibby up? Showed up again massively (in fairness he never hasn’t)...he gets bagged week after week because he’s not Offiah. Every side needs a few players like him in it. It’s attitude & getting the basics right week-on-week that pulls you through the sh**e performances like last night.

i'm quite fond of bibby now. his support for the last try was great, dont think anyone else was within 50 yards of hardaker.

don't know why he didnt go for the line for the hardaker try but it worked out anyway

Agree with your comments on Bibby he was slated by a few before the season’s start. For me he stays in the team until others force him out by performing better in 2021

Bibby, Hardaker and Powell were great.
Everyone else was below average.

I’m surprised no one is hammering some players like they would if it was Tony Clubb.

E.g.
Partington - barely 40m with the ball and 9 missed tackles.
Bullock, Singleton - barely 40m and under 5m per carry.

How can a prop not make over 5m per carry?? The defence is 10m away ffs.

I like partingtons aggression but he let himself down last night, he kept going in for the big hit and missing, ie the 9 missed tackles. Can’t do that against a better team.

I like Partington’s aggression but I am asking myself what does he and Smithies actually bring to the table other than an over egged ego and the need to look like the hardest mon on the pitch? Everyone loves the big hit but he’s constantly looking for it and more often than not making himself look the chum. If he concentrated on taking that misplaced aggression out in his offense and when he takes a ball in he’d be a far better player IMO. As for Smithies I just don’t know what he does to warrant a place in the side at the moment. He has bags and bags of potential but he seems content on trying to rough players up. Much like Partington; if he channelled that properly he’d be a far better player but that tutelage comes down ultimately to the coach. Lam seems happy for these two to carry on so I don’t expect it to change anytime soon.

The OP is correct on metres from the props but they have all been slated for how poor they were so I don’t understand the Clubb link. I’d rather Bullock/Singo in the squad than Clubb in any case.

The difference is, that was a poor performance by those players whereas stats like that are the norm for Clubb.

Is that the first time a fit Clubb hasn’t been selected by Lam? The only way to get more out of him is to make him earn a shirt instead of getting selected based on ten minutes worth of nothing. I’ve stuck up for Clubb at times but I’ve never seen a prop who looks as happy to leave the tough work to others if he can get away with it.

Yeah I think so. Flower, Bullock, Clark and G.Burgess went through periods of being available and not selected but I don't think Clubb has till now.

Didn't see the Salford friendly but plenty on here seemed to think Clark was one of our better props, no sign of him yesterday.
I know he's inconsistent but he can bring some oomph to the pack if he's on form.
You'd hope he'd be busting a gut in training as his future seems to be on the line.

Farrell was fantastic last night, typical Farrell
30mins or so in I wouldn't have been surprised if he had more carries and metres than the rest of the pack together.
And ethan havards 46 tackles and 130ish metres from 16 carries was very good (I agree with jonh that we need to find out if he's ever going to be an enforcer, but even if not and he isn't nesh than progression of his stats like that will.do for me).
Tony clubb would have to play 6 games to get those stats !!!!

As for Partington
Agree that his aggression sometimes created problems for ourselves, but it was at a time when we were being bossed in the forwards he stepped up and had a real go, e needed someone to try and lifts us, that'll do for me.

Not sure how much you can really read into the stats. It's the first game of the season. Maybe it's worth waiting for another game or 3 before deciding our entire pack is awful and all needs replacing. After all, we finished top and reached the Grand Final last season. They can't be that bad.

As someone who looks at the stats after every game you can only really get a picture of where someone's performances are at after they've played a few games. There are always anomalies. Every team has games where several of their forwards record a low amount of metres made, or have an exceptionally high number of missed tackles.